Vang Vieng

Our planned route through Laos follows a well-worn tourist trail. Luang Prabang, a UNESCO World Heritage city, is the real draw but on the way there’s Vang Vieng. I’ve been struggling with whether I actually want to visit Vang Vieng for a while now. You see, it is legendary for it’s party scene, which is focused around a tubing “culture” where backpackers float down a river in an inflated truck tire tube, stopping at bars along the way to get drunk and jump and swing into the river. They do this daily. For weeks, sometimes. Well, I like tubing and I like jumping and swinging into the river, but I’m not much for the drunk backpacker scene. I was never into it before, but certainly feel too old for it now. This was all Vang Vieng was known for for years, that and said drunk backpackers later going to restaurants to watch Friends reruns while they watch dinner. If that was all it had to offer, we definitely would have skipped Vang Vieng. Apparently, times have changed. Turns out, drinking and water don’t mix too well, and a bunch of tourists drowned. The party scene was shut down, or at least seriously cut back, but people kept coming. Evidently Vang Vieng did have more to offer, such as rock climbing, kayaking, and a seriously beautiful setting. Sounded okay to us, so off we went.

The town itself is a dump. There’s no two ways about it. It’s not clean, it’s dusty, it has no charm whatsoever. But the setting is amazing, with huge limestone mountains just on the opposite side of the Nam Song river. Our arrival in Vang Vieng unfortunately coincided with Steph taking a turn for the worse. She’d had an upset stomach for maybe two weeks, but it wasn’t a big deal until we got Vang Vieng and it developed into nausea and all the other unpleasentries that go along with Montezuma’s Revenge, as they call it in Mexico. It was a good enough reason to take it easy for a few days, so while Steph hung out in our hotel room, I tried to make the most of it. What else to do but hire a motorbike and go exploring? It’s incredibly cheap at just under $5 for the day, plus about $3 in fuel. I did a big loop through and around the limestone mountains on the other side of the river from town, stopping at the uber-touristy Blue Lagoon on the way. It was really beautiful and nice to get out on my own, but the road was seriously bumpy at times and seriously muddy at others.

the Blue Lagoon was filled with Asian tourists

After a couple days of doing nothing, Steph was finally feeling well enough to venture back into the world. Tubing made this town famous, we can’t leave without giving it a shot. We devised a plan to avoid the drunk backpackers – leaving in the morning before they all wake up. Our plan worked well since the only other tubers we saw was a French family with two young kids. Thus we had the river basically to ourselves, save the locals fishing in the river and the occasional kayaking group paddling past. We floated right on past all the bars even as they tried to wave us in, though did stop at one for fruit shakes and to play some pool. All of the rope swings, slides, and jumps have been removed, so we had a nice relaxing float down the river. The scenery was beautiful, the water was refreshingly cool on a very hot day, and there were no drunk backpackers in sight. Mission accomplished.

With tubing in Vang Vieng crossed off my bucket list, we gladly left town for Luang Prabang, the place to go in Laos. We had heard a lot of conflicting reports on how long it would actually take to get there, anywhere from 5 to 8 hours, so we were surprised when our driver said it was only 4 hours. Susie had just done the trip from the other direction and she said it was at least 7 hours. Apparently the confusion is due to there actually being 2 different ways to go – the new, fast road on which the transport companies are not yet insured, or the old, slow, windy, pothole-covered road on which they do have insurance. Luckily our driver was a bit of a rebel and took the chance on the new road and we were glad for it, arriving in Luang Prabang in just under the promised 4 hours and ready to explore!